


Goodbye Partner

by AgentDeathblade



Category: Lupin III
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, I tried to write Lupin III angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:02:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25043569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentDeathblade/pseuds/AgentDeathblade
Summary: Four months after that fateful night, Lupin reminisces about Jigen's death and tries to come to terms with it.
Relationships: Jigen Daisuke & Arsène Lupin III
Kudos: 19





	Goodbye Partner

**Author's Note:**

> I dedicate this one-shot to my Jigen glass which broke before I wrote this.

Lupin lies on the couch and puts his phone on speaker. The other line gets picked up after a few seconds of ringing.

_“It’s 2am, Lupin. What the hell do you want?”_

It’s the third night in a row he’s called a friend. The first night, it was Goemon. The second night, it was Fujiko. The third night, Zenigata has the honor of being Lupin’s vent buddy.

“Nothing, Pops. I can’t sleep. That’s all.” 

Lupin stares at the living room ceiling. His TV is on a channel showing some random western movie. He can’t bear to look at the screen. 

_“Oh. It’s about that incident, right?”_

Zenigata sits up from his bed, ready to take in whatever the thief’s gonna say and vent out. 

“You got it.” Lupin mutes the TV and stares at the screen.

After a few minutes of silence, Lupin finally speaks up. “Do you think he’s gonna hate me if we meet again in the afterlife?” 

Zenigata’s taken aback by the question Lupin decided to lead with. 

“Of course not. Why would you think that?”

Lupin’s mind flashes back to that fateful night four months ago.

* * *

Him and Jigen weren’t even doing a heist. They were just minding their own business; walking back to their place after watching a cowboy movie Jigen insisted on seeing. The two were busy arguing about the movie’s inconsistencies and plot holes, then suddenly, _BANG_! It happened all too quickly. A driveby assassination attempt for Lupin. Thankfully, Jigen was able to shoot the guy down successfully in a matter of seconds. He feels proud of himself, but a horrified, blood spattered Lupin looks at him.

Lupin’s hand shakes while he points at Jigen’s chest. “ _Jigen...your shirt.”_ He said quietly, but his voice was clearly distraught.

Jigen looks down to where Lupin was pointing and sees blood pooling on his chest.

“Ah, _shit._ ” Jigen loses consciousness, but Lupin manages to catch him. Panicked about losing his best friend, Lupin tries to keep Jigen alive as much as possible, even driving straight to the ER. But alas…

* * *

 _“Hello? Lupin? Are you still there?”_ Zenigata says, a bit loud, trying to get the thief back to earth.

Lupin eventually snaps back to reality after recalling the painful memory.

“Sorry, Pops. I spaced out for a bit.” The thief reaches for his phone. 

_“It’s alright. I understand. Losing a best friend is hard, especially when you’ve been with them for most of your life.”_

“I wish I took more pictures of us together. Jigen was never really the kind of guy to take pictures.” Lupin sadly says, scrolling through his phone’s gallery, looking at the very sparse photos of Jigen, most of which he took candidly. 

_“I’m really sorry, Lupin. Is there anything I can do?”_

“Nothing much, I guess. I’m just…” Lupin looks for the right words to say. After a few seconds of thinking, he only has one thing to say: “I hate myself.”

_“What? Why?”_

“He died, because he took the bullet for me.” Lupin says, clearly angry at himself.

 _“We could also assume that the assassin had a terrible aim.”_ Zenigata replies.

“I know you’re trying to, I don’t know, make me feel like it wasn’t my fault, but we all know that’s bullshit.” The thief’s voice is cold and distant, as if he’s trying to detach himself from his emotions. He hangs up the phone. Zenigata wonders if he should call him back, but decides that it’s best if he just gives Lupin some space.

Lupin is back where he started that night: staring at the ceiling, wondering how things would’ve turned out if he was the one who got shot instead. He gets off the couch and walks to Jigen’s room. He hasn’t been inside his room since the incident; it pains him too much. He stands in front of the door. A part of him is still hopeful that his best friend is on the other side of the door brandishing his Magnum, but he knows otherwise. He sighs and enters the room, but of course, nobody’s in there. The emptiness of the room is too much for him and he leaves his friend’s room with an even heavier heart.

Lupin retreats back to his own bedroom and tries to get some shut eye. After a few minutes of trying to sleep, he starts to use his phone and goes through random texts and messages he’s had with Jigen and pictures and videos he has of Jigen. He spots one voice memo, he definitely doesn’t remember recording, dated on his birthday. He opens the memo, and lets it play.

 _“Happy birthday, you old fuck.”_ Jigen’s voice fills Lupin’s room. The gunslinger sounds drunk, but happy, which made Lupin smile for the first time in four months. _“You’re like...friggin’ ANCIENT today.”_ A drunk Lupin can be heard protesting about that statement in the background, which made the Lupin listening to the memo chuckle. _“Anyway, just wanted to greet you and say that you’re OLD. Also, you owe me the FINEST bottle of bourbon for saving your ass in the Sinclair Tower heist. I don’t even know why I’m saying this to your phone. I can just say it to you in person: HEY LUPIN—“_

The voice memo cuts there and silence fills Lupin’s room again. But the silence doesn’t bother him this time around. Maybe Jigen’s memo, no matter how ridiculously short and nonsensical it was, was just something he needed to hear. 

* * *

The next day, Lupin visits the graveyard for the first time since the funeral. Ever since the burial, he’s never visited his friend’s grave since it hurt him too much. He sits in front of Jigen’s grave and gets a bottle of bourbon out. 

“Sorry if I was like...five months late on this.” Lupin sets the bottle on the ground. He looks at his friend’s gravestone and sadly smiles. “I miss you. So fucking much.” Tears start flowing out of his eyes. He tries to speak and say more words, but all that’s coming out from him are even more tears. After a few minutes of crying, he pulls himself together and manages to say a sentence: “If you saw that, you would’ve been laughing at me, non-stop.” He wipes away the tears from his eyes. “I love you and I miss you.”

Lupin walks back to the Fiat and takes one last glance at the grave. His face looks shocked, as if he just saw Jigen waving goodbye to him. Lupin walks closer, but sees that there’s nobody by his friend’s grave. He smiles at Jigen one last time. 

“Goodbye, partner.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you guys enjoyed the fic. Thanks for reading! :)


End file.
